This invention relates to the feeding of infants by means of feeding bottles, and more particularly the improvement of the safety and comfort of infants during feeding with a feeding bottle.
Feeding with a feeding bottle has for the infant risks of suffocating, choking or liquid going down the wrong way, when the rate or the pressure of the liquid flowing through the teat is too high.
The capacity of an infant to feed effectively and without risk depends on its ability to coordinate the steps of suction, deglutition and respiration, as well as its suction force. Although the majority of full-term babies are able to control and adjust the force and the duration of the suction in order to maintain an acceptable rate of liquid in light of their capacity to coordinate the three aforementioned steps, this is not the case for a few of them, in particular in the event of fatigue, and for the majority of premature babies or who have chronic diseases.
A person giving the feeding bottle has no way of knowing the rate that a baby is able to support and the suction force that then baby is able to develop, although this person is the only person in a position to control the rate of the liquid, not the infant itself. This rate depends in fact substantially on the hydrostatic pressure of the liquid at the outlet orifice of the teat of the feeding bottle, and therefore on the inclination of the feeding bottle in relation to the horizontal and to its level of filling. However it appears that less than one person in ten is able to correctly incline a feeding bottle during a feeding in order to maintain an acceptable rate of liquid for the infant. Faced with the uncontrolled flow of liquid flowing from the feeding bottle, the infant can have difficulties in getting its breath back or for resting, and as such runs the risk of suffocation, coughing, spittle, aspiration of liquid into the lungs or fatigue. Over time, the infant can develop an aversion for orality, or catch pneumonia due to the frequent penetration of liquid in the lungs.
It is therefore desirable to put the child in a position able to control himself the rate of the liquid flowing through the teat.